Squat-Challenge Workouts To Really Fire Up Your Glutes

Squat challenge exercise plans are a big thing in the fitness world right now, and for good reason; squats are one of those basic, perfect exercises that build strength from the ground up, helping you in your everyday movements.

Aside from giving you great glutes, squats can help boost your metabolism, improve your core strength and flexibility, help you prevent training injuries, enhance your vertical leap during sports, make your legs stronger and shapelier, and much more.

If you’re up to the task, there are a variety of different squat challenge workouts to choose from. Challenges can be a great way to help motivate you, especially as we transition into spring and summer, providing you with a competitive edge to your training. Additionally, there’s nothing quite like that sense of achievement when you’ve finished a workout challenge. can help you to have a true feeling of achievement once you’ve finished.

Without any further ado, let’s talk about some of the best squat challenges out there.

1. 30-Day Abs And Squat Challenge

This abs and squat challenge lasts about a month, and all it requires is your wbodyweight. But don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s easy: this squat challenge workout begins simply, but builds as the month goes on.

Note that you only have to do each day’s set of exercises once, although if you desire, you can do multiple sets per day. While it’s certainly true that a person who makes it to the end of the month will have developed some serious leg strength, there are some potential difficulties you should consider.

First, this challenge makes no provision for upper body exercise, so if you don’t add in additional upper body work, your workout will be incomplete.

Second, if you do this challenge, make sure you focus on form. If you’re going to be doing well over a thousand squats, you’d better be doing them right.

Third, make sure you listen to your body, and especially your joints over the course of the challenge. Don’t make the mistake of powering through when your knees are crying uncle.

2. 100-Rep Squat Workout Challemge

Men’s Fitness has a different sort of squat challenge workout. Instead of relying on bodyweight squats, this one uses barbell squats and a few other exercises. This program lasts four weeks, with evenly spaced workouts occurring twice a week.

First, perform four sets of barbell squats with the following pattern of reps: 30, 30, 20, 20. Take 45 seconds of rest between each set. Perform exercises 2A and 2B with 45 seconds rest after you’ve completed each back-to-back move.

1. Barbell Squat Sets: 4 Reps: 30, 30, 20, 20

2A. Barbell Romanian Deadlift Sets: 2 Reps: 10

2B. Barbell Hip Thrust Sets:2 Reps: 10

We recommend starting with a barbell weighing no more than 95 pounds. If this is too easy, you can move up to higher weights on subsequent weeks. However, make sure you’re able to complete all of the repetitions; for this squat challenge workout, it’s the number of repetitions, not the weight that counts.

3. 30-Day Squat Circuit Challenge

Pop Sugar rightly points out that performing just one exercise for a month can lead to problems. In order to prevent boredom, injuries stemming from overuse and to help build your leg muscles more effectively, their squat challenge incorporates a number of different squat variations. Each variation is done in every workout.

The first variation is a narrow squat, in which the exercise is performed with the feet touching.

The second variation, “narrow squat with back kick,” adds a swinging a straight leg back at the top of the motion, squatting again and then raising the other leg.

The third variation is simply the basic squat, with feet positioned about shoulders’ distance apart.

The fourth variation adds a side leg lift to the basic squat. Like the second variation, two squats with a leg lift on either side counts as a single rep.

The final variation is the sumo squat, in which the feet are angled outward and wide.

Throughout the course of 30 days, participants go from 30 squats up to 200 squats. Although this squat challenge doesn’t include any upper body work, it does include more variation in lower-body work than some other challenges.

4. 100-Rep Squat Challenge #1 and #2

Fitness Blender has put out two different squat challenges which they say work more muscles and burn more calories than challenges that only use one form of exercise. The first challenge includes 10 reps each of 10 different variations of squats, for a total of 100 reps. The second option mixes things up by adding jumping motions for a truly difficult challenge.

What’s great about Fitness Blender’s challenges is that they come with videos, so you can pull them up on your computer when you’re in the mood for a workout. Fitness Blender’s first squat challenge video takes about 8 1/2 minutes (although they recommend adding in a warm-up and cool down, so factor that in as well). The second takes about 10 minutes.